Introspection And The Power Of Becoming Self-Aware – Lesson 5 – The Process Of Analyzing

Introduction

Welcome to Lesson 5 in my Introspection And The Power Of Becoming Self-Aware course!

When you find yourself faced with a challenge, how do you respond?

I would hope that you would make time for introspection, to analyze what led you to this point – because how else can you determine why you do what you do and whether you should be doing something else?

If it were easy, the self-help industry wouldn’t be on a billion-dollar boom.

Having said that, if there is one big secret to self-help and personal development, it’s introspection.

Have you ever squeezed your eyes shut so tight when the alarm sounded that you hoped the act would be enough to whisk you away elsewhere? Why do you have to live through the same day again?

You get up, you grab a coffee and a bite to eat, you shower, get ready, and go to work, then you deal with the same people and the same problems until it’s time to go home and scramble to make dinner and spend time with your family before bedtime.

Have you ever felt like that? Like you’re stuck in a time loop? Like you’re living in the Truman Show version of Groundhog Day?

If you have felt that way, you have taken the first step in changing your life for the better – you have identified an issue and you can see that you feel like a hamster in an uncontrolled wheel.

And when you find a way to articulate that feeling, then you can do something about it.

However, that self-awareness isn’t the end of the journey – it’s merely the beginning.

What you need now is the self-awareness to recognize that you are more than just the actor in front of the camera in this movie, you are also the person sitting in the director’s chair. No one can do this but you.

Introspection: What To Do And What Not To Do

Do Not Obsess

One of the biggest negatives of the self-care movement is how a lot of people have misunderstood what it means.

It does not mean that you have to think about yourself obsessively all the time.

And guess what? Introspection doesn’t mean that either.

Obsessing about you isn’t going to help you gain greater insights. In fact, it’s probably going to skew your results – you’re going to end up more miserable than you ever were.

Why? Because they’re doing it wrong.

Often, people who spend a lot of time in introspection end up with more anxiety and struggle more socially. The reason for this is they are doing it wrong – they have become more focused on themselves rather than themselves in the world.

Do Not Ask Bad Questions

This is one of the ways that people get it wrong – part of the introspection and analysis process is asking questions, but which questions?

We tend to ask why a lot. That can be good advice, for other undertakings, but not for this one.

If you’re searching for underlying causes or reasons for discontent or dissatisfaction with life, then the why isn’t enough.

When you ask “why?”, your brain churns out an obvious answer. So, armed with the answer you march forward believing you have cracked it.

You haven’t though – the answer your brain provided you was based on your pre-existing beliefs. This is a natural human response, because our motives tend to be in our unconscious mind.

You have to dig deeper to get into it than just seizing on the obvious why. Instead of asking why, try asking what, who, or even when.

Let’s look at some examples.

Example 1

Linda enjoys her job, but she has recently lost her temper with a colleague. It isn’t the first time her temper has gotten the better of her when working with Maureen.

So, Linda assumes that it’s Maureen that’s the problem. There’s just something about her that makes her impossible to work with.

Most people would find that a reasonable deduction.

However, I would suggest that they (and you) are wrong.

Perhaps, instead, Linda should be thinking about what is going on in her wider world. For example, Maureen might just be the unlucky person she was working with when other stress got the better of her and she’s chosen to blame poor Maureen.

Linda takes a moment to practise introspection and analyze and realizes that today’s outburst was the result of anxiety due to a performance review.

So, Linda casts her mind back to the last time she was working with Maureen and she realizes that at that same time she was dealing with difficulty in her marriage.

It was never about Maureen – there was more going on in Linda’s world than she was prepared to deal with.

This is an excellent example of how we ask ourselves the wrong types of questions when we self-reflect, introspect, or analyze our inner-workings.

The wrong questions can lead you to make links between things that simply do not exist.

Or you might overestimate the connection to a degree that does not exist. This is known as the illusory correlation.

Let’s look at another example.

Example 2

Brenda is committed to her job. She is passionate about what she does and puts everything into every project.

Her most recent proposal had to be sent to a committee for evaluation and approval. And one of the members of the board just happens to be somebody who sat on another board who had rejected a previous proposal she made.

She has gone from a place of confidence to a place of intense anxiety because she has asked why – and her answer was the assumption that this committee member is going to shoot down her proposal just like they did the last one.

This person was responsible for that defeat so they are going to be responsible for this defeat, too.

Brenda has no evidence to back up this feeling. In fact, there were five board members on the committee who rejected her and she doesn’t know how anybody voted.

Now Brenda has added to her anxiety and stress levels because she tried introspection and asked the wrong question right out of the gates.

The reality of many why questions is that they only lead you to obsess about your problems instead of asking the right questions to self-reflect, introspect, and analyze.

The Process of Analyzing

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